ATLANTA (AP) — More than 50,000 tickets were sold in the first 24 hours for a potential AFC championship game in Atlanta, the NFL said Friday.
Season-ticket holders of the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs were given priority access to tickets if the Jan. 29 game is played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
The league revamped its playoff system after Buffalo's game against the Cincinnati Bengal was canceled. The contest was halted when Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field in Week 17, and there wasn't enough time to make it up.
The Bills could've claimed home field throughout the AFC playoffs with a win over the Bengals. Instead, Buffalo played one less game and finished a half-game behind top seed Kansas City, prompting the league to decide that a neutral site would be used if both teams advanced to the conference championship.
Atlanta's 75,000-seat, retractable-roof stadium was chosen as the site. If either Kansas City or Buffalo loses this weekend in the divisional round, the AFC championship game would be played at the higher-seeded team.
The ticketing plan for a game in Atlanta puts Bills fans on one side of the stadium and Chiefs fans on the other.
If any tickets remain on Monday for a playoff game in Atlanta, they would go on sale to the general public.
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